Cannabis enthusiasts light up at Oakland street festival

“Big Jay” of NorCal Care, weighs joints on a small scale to determine who will win the joint rolling competition.

Joints must weigh at least one gram to qualify. Photo by Catherine Traywick.

Touted by locals as the center of the medical marijuana industry, Oakland seems a fitting host for California’s first marijuana outdoor street festival: the two-day International Cannabis and Hemp Expo, which opened its doors Saturday.

Spanning five downtown city blocks, the event is also the first of its kind to provide an open-air cannabis consumption area, where anyone with a doctor approval for cannabis use may smell, taste or otherwise imbibe an astonishing array of marijuana-based products — from edibles and hash to massage oils and medicinal ointments. For this weekend only, card-carrying cannabis connoisseurs are invited to exercise their medicinal rights by lighting up on the steps of City Hall.

For many festivalgoers Saturday, smoking openly before the seat of local government was a surreal, if not long awaited, experience. While the sale and possession of marijuana remains a federal crime, despite medical marijuana laws in effect in California and 15 other states, no federal presence was visible in downtown Oakland yesterday. Even city police officers kept their distance, poised peaceably — and, according to one officer, indifferently — on the outskirts of the festival. Within the event, hired security did little more than give directions and check wristbands at entrances.

“For a long time we had to hide behind darkness, buying this stuff in alleys, where you’re as afraid of the guy selling to you, as you are of the cops,” said Angela Grasty, 27, a Harborside Health Center staffer. “So this is great. It feels good to let everyone see that it’s not a bunch of riff-raff. Everybody’s at peace, just living their day.”